Preoccupied. Poor guy; the Hammer of Dawn was his project, and now he’d always be known as the man who made it possible to wipe out a world. Inside, the house opened up into an echoing marble hall with a film-set staircase and corridors leading off on all sides. Maria, sitting in the kitchen at a table big enough for a banquet, looked tired. The housekeeper was making breakfast.
“Dom, I’m sorry …”
“Hey, doesn’t matter, baby.” He leaned over her chair from behind and hugged her as hard as he dared. How would I cope without her? What would my life be worth if she left? “You okay? I tried to get you. I wanted you to know we were coming home.”
“Isn’t it lovely here? It’s like living in an art gallery.”
Somehow, as all hell broke out beyond Ephyra, the high walls of the Fenix estate shut out the real world, and they ate breakfast. A goddamn breakfast with all the trimmings, even small talk, while Sera counted down to its own destruction.
And the kindly, rather awkward man pouring more coffee for Maria had to help make it happen.
Dom gave up trying to grasp it all and settled for holding Maria’s hand so tightly that she had to ask him to let go so she could use her knife and fork.
“Come on, Marcus.” Professor Fenix pushed back his chair and beckoned to Marcus to follow. “Got something to show you.”
Carlos had said that the Fenixes never fought like regular families did. It wasn’t the way that old money behaved. They just looked tense, or raised their eyebrows, or quietly disapproved with a tilt of the head; sometimes they really lost it and expressed grave disappointment. It was no wonder they couldn’t show enough affection. Bottling up all that stuff became a habit, a locked door that nothing could breach, not even the good things that needed saying and doing. Dom sat with his arm around Maria, listening to whispered voices.
“It’s such a shame,” Maria said, looking slightly past Dom as if she was talking to herself. “Does Marcus realize how much his dad loves him?”
If Marcus did, Dom thought, he would never say. After a while, Dom wandered out into the hall to look for them—it was a house you could get lost in, a house where you could hide and shut yourself away from the world—and realized they were sitting on the main stairs, talking.
Dom could hear them. He shouldn’t have stopped to listen, but he did.
“I didn’t take this decision lightly.”
“I know, Dad.”
“We just ran out of time. I’ve tried every damn way to find … alternatives, but it’s all that’s left now.”
“Dad, I’m out there. I see it. If we don’t do it, nobody’s going to survive.”
“Forgive me.”
“Nothing to forgive.”
“Oh, there’s a lot.”
Marcus didn’t reply for a while.
“Do what you have to do,” he said at last. “That’s the best any of us can manage.”
Dom felt terrible for Marcus, but then he often did. He found himself thinking that if Adam Fenix was Eduardo Santiago, he would have done this or said that, right from the heart with no holds barred, but that would have all been too much for Marcus. Whatever he felt—it was there, all right, but you had to look hard to spot it. This wasn’t the kind of family where people used the word love every day. It was probably wrenched out of them only on their deathbeds, if at all.
Dom looked at his watch. They’d need to get back to HQ soon. Whatever was coming, there would be an aftershock of some kind to deal with. He crept back to the kitchen and sat down to rest his forehead against Maria’s. For a minute or so he thought they were savoring a quiet and intimate moment, but then he moved a little and could see she was somewhere else entirely, eyes focused on something he couldn’t see.
“You okay, baby?” he said.
She took a few moments to drift back. “I need to go for a walk.”
“Not today. It’s a madhouse out there.”
“I have to. I can’t miss a day.”
“I think the exercise can wait awhile.”
“No, I have to. I have to go look.”
Dom couldn’t shrug that off as misunderstanding her. “Look at what?”
“If I don’t keep looking, I’ll never find them.”
He braced himself for an answer he knew he wasn’t ready to hear. “Who, baby?”
“Bennie and Sylvie. I know I saw them. Just once, but they’re out there, and they’ll be so scared—I have to go find them.”
Oh God. He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t. They’re gone, baby. They’re dead.
“It’ll be okay.” Shit. “It can wait a little.”
He held her more tightly. Some days she seemed to go to places in her mind where he couldn’t follow, however hard he tried. Now he knew exactly where she went, in every sense of the word.
We stick together however hard it gets. That’s the marriage vow. We don’t quit when it hurts.
He’d been crazy about her since he was eleven years old. He couldn’t imagine life without her. She was his life. He had to make sure she never forgot that.
“Hey, baby,” he said. “I haven’t told you I love you today, have I?”
CHAPTER 10
I can’t tell you exactly how many citizens we have here, sir, or who they are, because I don’t have a complete census of names yet. So I can’t even tell you how many Stranded have slipped in between evacuating Jacinto and today. We have a porous border, and a lot of people who look pretty rough to begin with.
(ROYSTON SHARLE, HEAD OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, BRIEFING CHAIRMAN PRESCOTT.)
KR-80, EN ROUTE FOR VECTES NAVAL BASE, SEVEN WEEKS AFTER LEAVING JACINTO.
“I never thought I’d envy men.” Bernie dragged herself through the cargo compartment hatch to squeeze between Baird and Marcus. Anya sat on the bench opposite, jammed between Cole and Dom. It was more diplomatic seating in a crowded Raven than cramming her up against Marcus. “This crate’s sanitary arrangements leave a lot to be desired for us girls. I expected better with Gettner driving.”
Cole guffawed and deafened everyone. He was a lot louder via a radio earpiece. “All I want to know is why ladies spend so damn long in the bathroom.”
“Sweetheart, six hours in the air is a long time.” She leaned forward and patted his knee. “Never take the traveling convenience of a dick for granted. If we had one, Baird and I certainly wouldn’t—would we, Blondie?”
Baird, arms folded tight across his chest, had taken refuge behind a fresh pair of goggles.
“Don’t mind Mataki, ma’am,” he said to Anya. “She’s old. She rambles.”
Bernie didn’t actually expect any more than a bucket in a Raven, but she sorely needed to see some levity right then. Cole could always be relied upon to join in and steamroller over everyone’s doubts. From time to time, she caught him staring at her, frowning a little, and his unspoken question said that he knew she was agitated but wasn’t sure why.
He was a perceptive lad. He’d put two and two together sooner or later. She’d wanted to tell him. Shit, she hadn’t even told Hoffman, and if there was anyone she felt she could confide in, it was him.
Yes, I’d rather deal with grubs than Stranded now. At least what you see is what you get. They never pretend to be human.
Dom jerked his head at Cole to to get his attention. “Not sick yet? You got it corked or something?”
“I’m picking my moment, baby.”
Gettner’s voice cut in on the circuit. “Not in my frigging bird you don’t, Private. Bag it, then dump it, okay?”
“See, your position as Queen Ratbag’s already been filled, Granny,” Baird muttered.
Gettner boomed again. “And I heard that, too, Corporal Baird. You want a nice refreshing dip with the sonar buoy?”
Bernie took it all as general relief and the gradual return of optimism. Mel Sorotki’s Raven was following about a hundred meters behind, carrying the underslung ’Dill and enough supplies to keep the recon party going if they decided it was safe for th
e fleet to start shipping in refugees. It felt like life was moving on for the first time in years.
“You ever been to Vectes, Bernie?” Dom asked.
“No, too far for most Stranded, and big seas. Easier pickings on the smaller islands. Plus the biohaz marker buoys didn’t do much for its tourist trade.”
“You never thought of yourself as Stranded?”
“Shit, no.” Bernie wondered if Dom would ever really understand how much the idea appalled her. Baird seemed to, at least. “I was just taking longer than expected to get back to base.”
She sometimes wondered if Dom believed her, but it was hard for anyone on the mainland to understand just how damn big and empty the world was, and how tough it was to get anywhere when there was nobody else around.
“I don’t know how you stood being on your own for that long,” he said.
“I left Galangi nine years after E-Day. We didn’t even know who else had survived the Hammer strikes until then, remember.” God, was it really that long? Had Mick been dead nine years? Grief did lose its sharp edges eventually, for her at least. Maybe Dom’s never did. “So that’s actually five years completely on my own, roughly … the rest was just being alone among people I knew.”
I could tell them. I could tell them all right now. I could get it over with, explain what happened, what I did, why I did it. Cole wouldn’t blame me. Anya and Baird wouldn’t. Dom? Not sure. But Marcus … no, he’s got his rules. He’d think I was an animal.
Marcus—eyes shut, arms folded across his chest—was definitely not asleep. The eye movement under his lids was all wrong, and she was jammed so close to him that she could feel the tension in his arms, as if he’d braced himself so that he didn’t lean on her. She’d been cooped up in transports often enough to know that dead-weight sensation when the Gear in the next seat finally nodded off and slumped against her.
“Where did you commandeer a boat?” he asked, eyes still shut.
“New Fortitude.” No, Marcus never forgot a damn thing anyone told him. “I got fed up waiting for the ferry.”
“For someone who’s afraid of water, you don’t let it hold you back.”
From anyone else, that might have been sarcasm, or even praise. From Marcus, though, it was a question. She just didn’t feel up to answering it in front of everyone when they had nowhere to run to avoid it.
“Marcus, you know I hated amphibious training,” she said. “I persuaded a trawler to drop me off on the mainland. It’s not like I sailed around Sera single-handed on a bloody raft. Well, not quite.”
Baird seemed to find that funny. “You hijacked a trawler? Classy. That’s so you. There’d have to be dead edible things involved.”
“Hey, we can’t laugh at them nautical types for their dumb-ass uniforms any more.” Cole held up a warning forefinger, diverting the others’ attention. Yes, he knew something was troubling her. “The navy’s drivin’. We got to depend on them now. Specially if we end up livin’ on an island.”
“Okay, day-trippers.” Gettner cut in on the radio. “Unless there’s been some unfortunate seismic activity on a Jacinto scale, we’ll be at your destination in thirty minutes. Met records say it’s windy most days.”
“Nice bracing breeze.” Marcus gave Bernie a look that said he’d finally picked up on her apprehension, too. “I’ll man the gun. Last disused COG base we visited had resident monsters.”
Anya, staring out the Raven’s door, looked swamped by her body armor. She was too slight for the standard-issue plates, so she’d opted to try partial armor on the upper body. Plates took some getting used to. Anya wanted to start.
Bernie still wondered if she’d done the right thing by encouraging her wish to be more frontline. A woman needed to be able to look after herself in a world that was now a lot more uncertain for wholly different reasons, but Bernie wondered if she was just feeding Anya’s need to live up to the larger-than-life image of Major Helena Stroud. Anya was surrounded by conspicuous valor wherever she turned: her mother, Marcus, Dom, Carlos, and even Hoffman all had received the Embry Star. It was in danger of becoming her benchmark, a sign that she was somehow lacking.
“If there’s anyone on Vectes, then they probably haven’t seen COG personnel in fifteen years,” Anya said. “That’s going to be interesting.”
“If that biohaz stuff got out of hand, they’ll have two heads. Shit, man, you saw those things we found at New Hope, whatever the hell they were.” Baird eased his elbow out of Bernie’s side and checked his Lancer. “Maybe we’ll find Indie troops there who don’t even know the Pendulum Wars are over.”
“I don’t care if we’ve got pirates coming out the storm drains,” Dom said. “Smell that air.”
Bernie could. It was the kind of scent that they just didn’t get on the mainland, the promise of cleaner skies. Vectes loomed on the haze of the horizon.
Marcus squeezed through into the forward section and settled down at the port-side gun. “Okay, Major, ready when you are.”
Gettner took the Raven in a cautious loop around the island. It was a seventy-kilometer crater, a long-dead volcano, and the coast was a hoop of granite cliffs that cradled fertile lowland in the bowl. On a chart, that was just data and contour lines. To the eye, it was another thing entirely.
Despite the warning signs and hazard buoys, the solid buildings of the naval base looked almost welcoming, and mostly intact; the old navy certainly built things to last. The metal jetty structures had seen better days, and some of the dock basins housed rusting, half-submerged wrecks as well as solid-looking vessels in dry dock, but there seemed to be so little overgrowth that Bernie wouldn’t have been surprised to see lines of naval ratings drilling on the parade ground.
“Good start,” Gettner said. “Sorotki, we’re heading inland now. But I think we’ve got our operating base identified.”
Vectes now didn’t look at all like the frayed oval on the naval charts. The grid said it was around five thousand square kilometers, and at this height, Bernie could no longer see the sea. She could have been anywhere on the mainland continent in the pre-Locust days. There was open country, forest, fields—yes, fields with clear boundaries, obviously maintained—and a river. In the distance, she could see granite highlands off to the west. It all looked solid and permanent, even comfortable, not a windswept rock in the middle of an ocean at all.
“Shit, rivers?” Cole pointed at the broad ribbon of water snaking beneath. “Man, this is going to be nice. I might take up fishing.”
This place could support Jacinto’s remnant just fine, Bernie decided. It was bigger than Galangi, and that was pretty comfortable. They could start planting crops right away in this climate; people would now see some end in sight for minimum rations. The higher-minded civvies might have been bleating about organizing city governance and councilmen, but average humans didn’t give a shit about that. They wanted to eat and stay warm, and not get killed by grubs. It wasn’t much to ask at the end of a war.
“Well, maybe we won’t need to lynch Prescott after all,” she said. “Good call, Chairman.”
“Up ahead,” said Baird.
“What?”
“I said, look up ahead.”
Gettner cut in. “Yeah, I see it. House.”
“They’d have needed living quarters here,” Anya said, sticking to the past tense, when all Bernie could see now was an island where someone was still maintaining things. “Not just for the naval personnel, either—they’d have needed to be self-sufficient for long periods because resupply wouldn’t have been easy.”
“You mean like that?” Marcus said. He was staring down the sights of the door gun. “Nice tidy furrows.”
Gettner banked the Raven. Fields didn’t plow themselves, and as they passed over, a man in overalls straightened up from a power tiller, watched the Raven for a few seconds, and then began jogging in the direction of the house.
“Confirmed, still inhabited,” Gettner said. “So, you want to say hi, Lieutenant, or do
a covert recon, seeing as they now know we’re here?”
Anya straightened up in her seat. Gettner was taking her frontline familiarization seriously, too. Bernie waited.
Come on, Anya. You make life-or-death calls every day. It’s no different on the ground, except that you’re in the line of fire, too.
“Look for some obvious center of population,” Anya said, sounding more confident. “If we go covert now, it could look hostile. Try raising them on the radio. They probably don’t get too many visitors.”
That’s our Anya. Good going, kid.
Anya was in her thirties, but she would always be Major Stroud’s kid. Bernie didn’t see that as a bad thing. Gettner seemed to cut her a hell of a lot more slack than normal, too. She was even talking her through the procedure, and doing an unusually diplomatic job of it for a woman who could etch glass with her insults.
“Better not buzz their quaint homesteads.” Gettner took the Raven higher. “Nothing like low-flying gunships to upset the natives.”
The occasional single-story home below became ones and twos, still small scattered farmhouses, but then the horizon resolved into something more familiar—a man-made landscape of roofs. It was nothing like Jacinto, no towers or domes or skyscrapers, but it was recognizably a village. The Raven climbed higher.
“Fenix, what are you seeing down there?” Gettner asked.
“No anti-air batteries, but watch out for assholes with rifles.”
“Try the more strategic analysis, Sergeant.”
“Low technology level, judging by the roads. Low-rise buildings. Sweep the whole area and I’ll give you a better estimate.”
“Okay, let’s see if anyone’s home.” Gettner started repeating the radio contact litany. “This is COG KR-Eight-Zero, inbound from Port Farrall, calling Vectes ATC. This is COG KR-Eight-Zero, calling Vectes ATC …”
Cole peered below. It was fascinating to watch him forget to feel sick when he had something that completely distracted him. “Cows! When did you last see a cow in a field?”
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